Diligently working on making it happen, and I hope it'll meet expectations!

But I want to do better than the people who threw me into the deep end and said "this job is hard and you're going to fail, because everyone fails, haha get ready for abuse, kiddo".

Because there's everything from NPC ally and asset tags helping shape the outcome of missions, to "how do you prep and tag hotspots", how do they affect the shape of the map, and so on and so forth. And the temptation is very real to go "you just do it! You know how!" because that's how I was taught

There's a lot more at play here, and a big part of the thing making this project both Big and Stressful is - I'm in a spot where I already run multiple games like this, I know it works, how do I translate "this works seamlessly FOR ME" into "here's how to DO it all" in a useful format?

So the players select a hotspot, they play through that sequence - maybe it's a one-off fight, maybe it's a staged setpiece, it varies, more on that shortly. And then you begin a new PHASE. Time ticks forward one unit, the players get some free actions, and then decide again.

A good GM can already sort of simulate that, but how do we SUPPORT that? With play cycles. The first element is "Hotspots". These are obvious. These are your XCOM2 mission targets. Where these are marked, you have a guaranteed Tactical Objective. Mech fight or no, this is the familiar game.

However, linear adventures are currently the most supported for Lancer in published material and more. So instead, I'm swerving the other way: I am a noted XCOM fangirl. One of the key elements of XCOM games, especially the newer series, is the geoscape full of conditions and hotspots.

I'm not going to go into detail about my feelings on how too many RPGs just kind of handwave "do your magic DM juice, DM, you're the wizard, you can do it!" for adventure design, please take it as read that I believe "there's need for more linear design support too, we need good stuff" as well.

I like Lancer. I also think that Lancer is missing a couple things that are important to my own Mecha Fantasy. One of those things is "a modular framework for campaign play": it works "just fine" if you have a linear adventure, and there are some great ones out there, but!

Folks have been egregiously kind to me over the last little while and I feel like talking about something cool, so here's a couple teasers for the Big Project I'm working on - ya girl likes maximalist games with fun moving parts, but also wants them to be accessible.